We see a lot of different footprints and component types for PCB Assembly at Bittele Electronics. A majority of through-hole part footprints are designed with circular holes to accommodate circular or square leads. This configuration is ideal for most through-hole components, but many parts incorporate rectangular or 'blade'-style leads, which do not fit well into circular or square holes; instead, it is best to use a plated slot footprint. To illustrate this point, the image below shows a common barrel power connector with four thin rectangular leads fit into two different footprint styles.
The footprint on the left in this image clearly leaves much more empty space around the component leads, where the image on the right provides a snug fit. This makes the circular hole configuration much more prone to common PCB Assembly defects such as solder joint voiding, since more solder is required to fill the holes.
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These concerns become more significant as the size of the pins increases, from both design and production perspectives, so large blade-style connectors should definitely use plated slots rather than circular holes. At Bittele, we can still work with circular holes for rectangular pins when the part is relatively small, such as the standard barrel power connector used in this example. That being said, the circular holes do also take up more space on the PCB itself, and using plated slots can often help in size-restricted designs.
Altium Designer is one of the most popular and frequently used CAD software for schematic design and PCB Layout. If you are planning to become a professional hardware design engineer, if you are moving to Altium Designer from different software or if you have never designed any board before and you would like to learn it, this course will help you. Position the cursor at the required location in the workspace and click to anchor the starting point for the slot. Move the cursor and click to place a second point for the slot. Continue placing further vertices for the slot, clicking to define each new vertex, or right-click, or press Esc, to exit slot placement mode. (slots are 2mm - default milling bit size, with tabs with 5-hole perfs). I realize the board house will most likely want just the path for the router and not its actual shape, but I want to create gerbers with the routed slots so there's no confusion about inside vs. As well as I like having the 3D view look like what I expect to get.
For the design of non-circular holes, a few things must be considered, but the process is fairly straightforward overall. It should first be noted that slots can be defined as plated through holes (PTH) or non-plated through-holes (NPTH). PTH slots are most often used in component footprints, and most PCB layout CAD programs provide an option in their footprint editor to define a hole as circular or oval. This will be enough for Bittele's PCB Fabrication team to recognize the hole and use the correct process, but for extra clarity, some clients also indicate slot holes on a fabrication layer of their Gerber files.
NPTH Slots can be designed in the same manner, and simply designated as NPTH / Mechanical in the CAD software, or they can be designed on the Board Outline Gerber layer. The following images show multiple options for both PTH and NPTH slots, first in a Gerber file view and then a 3D rendering of the resulting board.
If you have a question about hole shapes or sizes in your design, please feel free to Contact Us at any time and ask one of our PCB experts. With our flexible PCB Fabrication process at your disposal, never again will you need to fit a square peg in a round hole.
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I've been working recently on a new top secret project that used multiple slots in the board. Normally I just define them as slotted pads in Altium and the board house deals with it.
Usually I just add a pad that's defined as a slot with a very small pad in the middle
This time I was using OSH Park, and as it turned out things were not that easy. Their process does not support milled slots in the drill file. Instead slot outlines need to be on the board outline layer, and at least 100 mills wide. After a bit of fiddling, here is how I got there (This assumes you have the part footprint open for editing in PCB Library editor) :
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- Draw a closed outline of the slot on the keepout layer, making sure it's 100mil or wider. This also helps making sure polygon pours stay away.
- Go to Tools> Convert>Create Region from Selected Primitives
- Click on the newly created region and check 'Board Cutout' box
Making region a board cutout
- Add 'CUTOUT' text inside the cutout on the keepout layer
- Update your parts from the library or place your new parts
- Do placement/routing/design rule checks
- When generating Gerbers, go under Gerber Setup>Layers and make sure to check Plot box near Keep-Out-Layer GKO. This will be your board outline/slots drawing for Oshpark
- Check Gerbers and confirm that GKO layer now contains outlines for the slots:
Section of Keepout layer showing board outline, slots and the text for the fab
- Submit files as usually
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Big Disclaimer(s)- I am yet to receive my boards back, so while it appears everything satisfies the specs, I may be completely wrong and the boards will be ruined. I'll post an update once they come in. The directions are for Altium 13, so if you use 14, some menus may look different. My keepout layer contains board outline as I generate that from board shape by default.
